OpenShift is a PaaS from Red Hat. It allows for deployment (and scaling) of apps written using Java, PHP, Ruby, Python, Perl including a number of frameworks and with support for MySQL, MongoDB, SQLite, PostgreSQL and even provides continuous integration tools (Jenkins), it’s definitely an interesting range of tools.
The deployments can be controlled via a REST api or the rhc command line tool. This short guide aims at helping the newcomers to get started quickly with the rhc command.
There is a YUM repo available for Fedora and RHEL systems, but rhc is a Ruby gem and it means you can install it with gem once your gems build environment is setup properly.
$ gem install rhc
You should have created already an account on OpenShift, if you haven’t please do, then you’ll be able to chose you domain name. This is a namespace binded to your username and will affect the apps url, which will look like $APPNAME-$DOMAINNAME.rhcloud.com
$ rhc domain create $NAMESPACE -l $USERNAME
Very simple step needed to create an app inside the namespace defining some of its peculiarities.
$ rhc app create $APPNAME -l $USERNAME -t ruby-1.9
This will create an app of type ruby-1.9 called $APPNAME, but other types can be used (as of January 21st 2013):
diy-0.1 Do-It-Yourself jbossas-7 JBoss Application Server 7.1 jbosseap-6.0 JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6.0 jenkins-1.4 Jenkins Server 1.4 nodejs-0.6 Node.js 0.6 perl-5.10 Perl 5.10 php-5.3 PHP 5.3 python-2.6 Python 2.6 ruby-1.8 Ruby 1.8 ruby-1.9 Ruby 1.9 jbossews-1.0 Tomcat 6 (JBoss EWS 1.0) zend-5.6 Zend Server 5.6
Here is a complete list of commands you can use to control your app
create Create an application and adds it to a domain git-clone Clone and configure an application's repository locally delete Delete an application from the server start Start the application stop Stop the application force-stop Stops all application processes restart Restart the application reload Reload the application's configuration tidy Clean out the application's logs and tmp directories and tidy up the git repo on the server show Show information about an application status Show status of an application's gears
This is needed to add support for a specific feature to your app. We are adding here the mysql-5.1 cartridge.
$ rhc cartridge add mysql-5.1 -a $APPNAME -l $USERNAME
Here is a list of available cartridges (as of January 21st 2013)
10gen-mms-agent-0.1 10gen Mongo Monitoring Service Agent 0.1 cron-1.4 Cron 1.4 haproxy-1.4 HAProxy 1.4 jenkins-client-1.4 Jenkins Client 1.4 mongodb-2.2 MongoDB NoSQL Database 2.2 mysql-5.1 MySQL Database 5.1 metrics-0.1 OpenShift Metrics 0.1 phpmyadmin-3.4 phpMyAdmin 3.4 postgresql-8.4 PostgreSQL Database 8.4 rockmongo-1.1 RockMongo 1.1 switchyard-0.6 SwitchYard 0.6
A very common need is to access the same account from different workstations, in this case you’ll have to add the user’s public SSH keys to the account.
$ rhc sshkey add $KEYNAME /path/to/key.pub -l $USERNAME
$NAME is a general identifier. You can customize which is the default SSH key to be used by rhc in its config file.
$ cat ~/.openshift/express.conf # SSH key file #ssh_key_file = 'libra_id_rsa' # Default rhlogin to use if none is specified #default_rhlogin=$USERNAME
Two very powerful commands allow you to tail log files and to create local copies of the entire workspace where your app is running into remotely.
$ rhc tail $APPNAME -l $USERNAME
This executes the regular tail command on the target host, copying back the output. You can use any other tail option passing the -o argument.
Finally you can get a snapshot of the working environment to look, for example, at custom files or even the execution environment variables.
$ rhc snapshot save $APPNAME -l $USERNAME $ tar xzf $APPNAME.tar.gz $ ls $APPID/.env/ OPENSHIFT_APP_CTL_SCRIPT OPENSHIFT_APP_NAME OPENSHIFT_CONTAINER_UUID OPENSHIFT_INTERNAL_IP OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR PATH OPENSHIFT_APP_DIR OPENSHIFT_APP_TYPE OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR OPENSHIFT_INTERNAL_PORT OPENSHIFT_RUN_DIR OPENSHIFT_APP_DNS OPENSHIFT_APP_UUID OPENSHIFT_HOMEDIR OPENSHIFT_LOG_DIR OPENSHIFT_TMP_DIR $ cat $APPID/.env/OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR export OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR='/var/lib/libra/0f5c99f17db74cf3a93edcf330401208/hellotornado/data/
The tool is quite easy to manage and can be updated easily as it is a gem. There are also a lot of other interesting features you may want to look at, like the port forwarding but this was just a quickstart intended to provide a short reference. One last note before closing: you can SSH into your remote system:
$ rhc domain show
hellotornado @ http://hellotornado-gfidente.rhcloud.com/
========================================================
Application Info
================
Created = Jan 19 5:24 PM
UUID = ca5b02c422f04691959d6235de18ff81
Gear Size = small
Git URL = ssh://ca5b02c422f04691959d6235de18ff81@hellotornado-gfidente.rhcloud.com/~/git/hellotornado.git/
SSH URL = ssh://ca5b02c422f04691959d6235de18ff81@hellotornado-gfidente.rhcloud.com
Cartridges
==========
diy-0.1
$ ssh ca5b02c422f04691959d6235de18ff81@hellotornado-gfidente.rhcloud.com
Welcome to OpenShift shell
[...] cut
[hellotornado-opinoid.rhcloud.com ~]> help
Help menu: The following commands are available to help control your openshift
application and environment.
ctl_app control your application (start, stop, restart, etc)
ctl_all control application and deps like mysql in one command
tail_all tail all log files
export list available environment variables
rm remove files / directories
ls list files / directories
ps list running applications
kill kill running applications
mongo interactive MongoDB shell
Lot of fun in there. There is also a shortcut for the interactive mongo shell. There doesn’t seem to be any for mysql or postgres but you can use the standard command line tools or access to them via port forward as per this blog entry